Page 60 of Lady Sings the Blues

I continue to lament my life choices with my eyes squeezed tight. If bodily harm comes to me, I don’t want to see it coming. Though eventually he stops harassing me, to speak with his buddies. That’s when I chance opening them again on a whispered sigh and really, I’m glad I do.

As my gaze shifts outside, while trying my best to formulate an escape plan, I zero in on at least a dozen men wearing—and for like the first time ever notice straight off—biker cuts. Brimstone Lord Biker cuts, where they gather off to the side of the store.

Without calling attention to him, my eyes cut to a man almost outside of my visual horizon, so totally out of the Horde’s. The man slips out of his leather, folding it and stuffing it into a saddlebag at the back of a bike. He moves inside the Starbucks, not on Horde radar, who incidentally continue to talk amongst themselves.

Only my attention follows the man as he moves stealthily through all the tables and customers to the back by the restrooms. There I see his hand pull down on the fire alarm. The alarm buzzes loudly. Strobe-like warning lights flash. While patrons and employees scramble out of the store, Lords file in. Black haired Horde grips my arm tightly, flanked on all sides by his Horde compadres.

They’re outnumbered and outgunned, yet it doesn’t stop the gun fight from breaking out. I don’t know who fires first. All I do know is someone throws a chair through the front window, the black haired Horde falls, and I’m flung like a ragdoll over someone’s shoulder. The patch on the back of his cut, even upside down, I can see the flaming devil and the words Brimstone Lords.

Then I’m safe, tossed into the back of a black SUV with the windows blacked out, and I feel the car hum to life and gun into traffic.

I’m surrounded by black. Even blacked out glass separates the front and back seats.

When we do finally stop, someone flings the door open and I’m dragged from the backseat, not gently, inside a large, corrugated metal warehouse. But just like back home, turns out to be a clubhouse. Unlike back home, I’m not made welcome, offered a drink, or any such use of manners.

The room is filled to capacity with pissed off bikers, club pieces in various stages of undress huddled in a corner, and at least one man laid out across a sofa bleeding. Is he bleeding because of me?

The biker continues to carry me, while I remain flopped over his shoulder, through the common into a kind of holding cell. Which is really an empty room where he drops me, again not gently, onto the floor.

So I sit, back resting against the blank white wall, hands resting on bent knees, lightly banging my head against the wall just to pass the time.

Eventually I fall asleep. There’s no way to know how much time has passed until I’m woken by someone shaking me.

“Elise.” Shake. “Elise, get the fuck up.”

My eyes pop open. “Chaos?” I tilt my head studying him, not fully awake yet. “Where’s Beau?”

“You done it this time, little girl.”

I’d done it. I didn’t mean to done it. How do I keep doning it?

He helps me up from the floor, leading me from the room with a hand to my back. Nobody talks to me, not even Chaos. As we walk through the compound I even see Duke, president of the Thornbriar chapter. I do not see Beau.

Outside Blue sits in the driver’s side of Beau’s black pickup. Yet still no Beau. Chaos helps me in then moves to mount his bike. Bloodhound, Levi and Scotch leave the compound next, mounting their bikes. Last to come out, looking über pissed right the hell off, is Duke. When he mounts his bike, all the men start their engines and peel out, escorting me and Blue, two riders to the front of us, and three to the back.

Beau didn’t come.

Blue doesn’t talk. The men don’t stop. As the scenery changes to denser forests covering bigger, rockier mountains, the sky darkens revealing an aerial sea of twinkling stars. Yet I can’t shake the foreboding feeling taking hold in the pit of my gut. And really, is there a worse foreboding than gut foreboding? The answer to that would be an unequivocalno.And since that answer comes in the form of an unequivocal no, I drop my gaze from where I’d been staring out the window to my hands, close my eyes and pray to the universe that I didn’t just screw up my second chance with Beau to the point that there’s no way to unscrew it.

When we finally pull into the Thornbriar compound, Levi won’t look at me. Blue parks the truck, then hops out. He runs around to get my door. Taking me by the arm he leads me inside through the common and straight to my room where he opens the door and shoves me in, closing the door again sharply. Beau’s not in here, either.

I shower, dress for bed, choosing one of Beau’s tees because it smells like himandI’m a glutton for punishment, and climb under the covers. He doesn’t come home all night. When I wake up in the morning, there’s no body indent. His side of the bed remains just as cold as the night before.

To this, I decide to stay in the room away from angry bikers for as long as I can hold out, and sulk.

At some point during the day Trisha pops her head inside the room.

“Just checking to see if you’re still alive,” she says, not nearly as welcoming as before, but at least she’s not a brother of the club.

“Kind of wishing I wasn’t, right now.” I admit, honestly.

“You’ll get through it.” Her eyes soften. “Hungry?”

“No. But thanks.”

She leaves. I continue to lick my wounds in bed, staring at the wall. Occasionally, my phone.

When the clock on my phone flips to ten—that would bep.m.—Chaos walks in the room this time, slamming the door against the wall with a loudbang,making me jump. “Quit your hiding. Duke wants to see you.” Then he leaves.

---